Have you convinced yourself that your passion for chocolate or your chips-and-dip habit isn’t the real reason those jeans no longer fit? And that it’s all the fault of your slow-motion metabolism? Well, forget that excuse. New research reveals that we can all get our bodies to burn calories faster. Below, experts address your most burning questions about charging up your metabolism.
What exactly does metabolism mean, anyway?
Your metabolic rate is the speed at which the body burns calories…

The dreaded ‘click of death’ can be a pretty serious issue to deal with, especially if you are not familiar with the reasoning behind that hard drive clicking like it is. The first thing people generally think of when they hear their hard drive clicking is that it is going to fall into some catastrophic failure and their data and files will be lost. This can happen, no reason to lie about that. However if you regularly backup your files,…

If you believe the following, honk. 1) Social Security won’t be there when I retire. 2) 1 can’t retire on less than $1 million (or $2 million-fill in scary large number).
The noise outside my window is deafening. Among working people, those two statements now pass as gospel. There’s just one little problem: Both are wrong.
SOCIAI SECURITY
You read everywhere that the Social Security program is going broke, partly because the government has borrowed from Social Security’s trust fund…

With Personal Systems remaining part of IBM, some believe the computer giant is not giving the division enough of the freedom it needs to be successful in the intensely competitive PC market.
By holding onto Personal Systems, IBM is signaling that PCs and workstations are “part of the crown jewels” and too valuable to spin off, said Ulric Weil, a principal in Weil & Associates, a Washington consulting firm. “But if they stick with their culture of 65 years, they…

My friends consider me a calm person. When other drivers but me off without signaling, I just sigh and keep going. When store clerks are surly, I ignore them. So why was I standing at the top of the stairs the other day, waving a Lego block and screaming that if I found one more beneath my bare feet, I’d throw all of them out?
My kids, that’s why. Gus, 6, and Teddy, 2, have an uncanny ability to pull…

This year, an estimated four million Americans will receive blood transfusions. “The blood supply has never been safer,” says Jim MacPherson, executive director of America’s Blood Centers. While there are small risks involved with getting a blood transfusion, experts say they are far outweighed by the risks of not receiving blood. What’s more, blood banks continue to pursue “absolute safety” through the development of more sophisticated tests and more detailed questioning of potential donors.
Here, answers to some common concerns:…

One year ends, another begins. “Now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been,” the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote. His invitation to be open to receiving the New Year’s bountiful blessings inspires me to look deep within myself. I gaze with gratitude at a blank canvas, eager to begin painting 1997.
In the past, when I focused on perfectionism rather than possibility, I didn’t welcome the New Year with as much joy and…

In March 1993, residents of Silver Spring, MD, were shocked by a brutal crime: the cold-blooded murder of Mildred Horn, her quadriplegic 8-year-old son, and the boy’s nurse. Horn’s husband, Lawrence, convicted of hiring the killer, was sentenced to life in prison. In October 1995, the man he hired, James Edward Perry, was sentenced to death.
But there was, in a way, another accomplice, according to the prosecution: a book whose instructions Perry followed–to the letter–in carrying out 22 details…

SHE CAME TO MY HOUSE EVERY DAY, bearing freshly squeezed orange juice, pots of chicken soup, and loads of advice. My friend Alice(*) was a godsend, there for me at a horrible time when I’d lost my job and was feeling miserable. I’d weep, and she’d tut-tut and put her arm around my shoulder, bucking me up and reassuring me that my previous employers weren’t fit to shine my shoes. When yet another job interview became a dead end, she’d…

Last year, my 6-year-old son, David, took karate lessons. For most parents, the occasion would be just one of many milestones in their children’s lives. For my wife, Kathy, and me, however, it was much more than that. It wasn’t too long ago that we thought our son might never walk.
Like his sister, Liz, six years older, David was the perfect baby-sleeping through the night after only a few weeks, exploring and crawling at 6 months, and constantly flashing…